Stephen LawsonSenior U.S. Correspondent, IDG News Service

Facebook makes thousands of changes in its code every week. Any one of them could accidentally cause Facebook software to take up more data, memory or battery life on your phone. So the company tests code on more than 2,000 phones to account for hardware models, operating systems and network connections.

Watson might schedule your meetings someday if a partnership between IBM and Cisco Systems bears the fruit they’re hoping to grow. In the meantime, the companies hope to save employees from some of the meaningless tasks they have to carry out just to work with their colleagues.

As the Wi-Fi Alliance starts certifying the latest gigabit-speed products to work together, users may not get as excited as they did for some earlier standards. But the new technology adds a few features with real advantages, at least for some users.

Cisco Systems just cast a vote of confidence in one of the technologies that might get your next IoT device online. On Tuesday, the company announced gateways between LoRaWAN low-power wireless networks and fatter pipes like Ethernet cables.

The Wi-Fi Alliance says that by September there will be a way to test whether an LTE device can get along with Wi-Fi. But Qualcomm, one of the biggest backers of LTE-U (LTE-Unlicensed), is demanding those tests immediately.

One of the main goals of SDN (software-defined networking) is to make networks more agile to meet the changing demands of applications. A new Silicon Valley startup, Apstra, says it has an easier way to do the same thing.

Barefoot Networks is making what it calls a fully programmable switch platform. It calls the Tofino series of switch chips the world’s fastest, at 6.5Tbps (bits per second). Plus, its architecture gives networking vendors near-total freedom to develop new switching software.